


a stuttered ancient alphabet in skin

by madamebadger



Category: Elfquest
Genre: Backstory, Mortality, Multi, Other, Recognition, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are ageless, on a world where everything rises and falls; they are eternal, on a world in which one thing must die as another is born. They are ethereal on a world of earth: children of stars living under the sun. They adapt.</p><p>It is not always easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a stuttered ancient alphabet in skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [russian_blue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/gifts).



> None of the official archive warnings seem to fit, but this fic does discuss both the nature of Recognition and the issue of mortality for an immortal species.
> 
> I have chosen to take the existing backstory works ("How Shall I Keep From Singing?" and the Blood of Ten Chiefs comics/anthologies) more as suggestions than as canon for the purposes of this fic.

**Timmorn's Blood**

The elves huddle around the fire. The wolves stay well back from the fire. And in between them— _halfway_ between them: Timmorn.

(Murrell's blood still rises at the sight of him. Not as it did when they first Recognized; that urgency is past, now that she is with child. But nonetheless. Her soul knows him. She is sure in her bones that this first Recognition, this first child, will not be the only one between them. She does not know how precisely she knows; it is not the surety she would once have had, in the vessel and before, where she was confident of all knowledge of her body's fate because she was in perfect control of it. That surety is lost, as the unpredictable ferocity of Recognition shows. But still. She is sure.)

Timmorn sits on a stone, one foot drawn up under him and the other outstretched, more comfortable within his flesh than any of his lost mother's generation, Murrell's generation. She does not think that he had placed himself at such a clear halfway point through any deliberate decision; it is simply that like his mother's people he does not fear fire, and yet like his father's people (for they are _people_ , Murrell has learned, though they are also beasts) he has no need of it, either. His pelt is thinner than and not as complete as a full wolf's, but the clothes of skin and fur he wears are enough to keep the chill out. He does not have the thin skin, the disfamiliarity with suffering, that makes his mother's people (Murrell herself included) huddle close to the fire.

(The fire is wood. It is Zartyl's magic that permitted it to light though the wood is wet, they have at least learned enough to cease burning stones and snow in lieu of normal fuel. They learn this world's lessons, if slowly.)

He is alert yet relaxed, his expression at peace, as if he were not the subject of the debate that rages among the elves who circle the fire.

Murrell envies him that peace. She does not have it. She who has lived countless millennia, who once could change her form as easily as changing her mind, who had once been able to untether her soul from her body—cannot even begin to approach the equanimity of this one whose life thus far can be measured in _decades_. And yet perhaps that is why he is as calm as an unruffled lake: the perfect balance of his self between the Here and the Elsewhere, the lightness of his soul without the weight of endless memories, the way that in his inner being he is not half one thing and half another but wholly himself, wholly Timmorn. He is unfathomably _young_ , and Murrell can barely remember youngness, youth, her own or anyone else's, but when in the heat and heart of Recognition she touched his inner self, she felt not rawness or inexperience but only that wholeness, complete unto itself, and ageless.

—ageless, and yet not ageless, and it is that very thing, his age and his _aging_ , that lies at the heart of the argument. For now, a year and a half after his first Recognition of Murrell, he has Recognized again. There will not be one wolf-blooded one, one mortal among the elves; there will not even be two. There will be three, once Murrell and Seilein's children are both born. One is an exception. Two is a pattern. But three is a new way of things, a way that now invites death into the people.

** Invites death? ** Aerth's mind-voice is angry. ** Is that what you would call Timmain's gift, Timmain's sacrifice—an invitation to _death_? ** Twined in and around his mid-voice is the image of Timmain herself, as she was shortly after their disastrous landing, a memory to inspire memories of their own. And Murrell does remember, Timmain tall and beautiful and the most powerful of all of them in their diminished state. Timmain who had not lost the peoples' ability to change forms, to know and to become. ** Were it not for Timmain and Timmorn, we would all be dead now, starved without the meat they bring, frozen without the pelts and skins they provide. **

** No one doubts that. ** Nekodai's sending is soothing as honey, and yet it is clear that Aerth is not soothed. ** But Timmain's sacrifice is one thing. We are all grateful to Timmorn, for his strength, for what he does for us. But that is one thing. This is another. Will all our children be part-wolf? **

** It is not as you think, ** Seilein sends. In contrast to Murrell's troubled thoughts, Seilein's mood is palpably calm. But then, she and Timmorn had Recognized mere days before. Murrell remembers the elation she felt, the wholeness, in the weeks after that first Recognition. It is only now, when she is a more than a year into her pregnancy and with another half-year before she will bear her daughter, that she has room for doubt. ** Timmorn's soul is an elf's soul. It has a wolf's wildness in it, yes, and it is a soul of this world—but it is an elf's soul. I have touched it. I know. And our son's soul is as well. I felt his name when he was conceived. **

Now, then, it is the time to speak. 

** It was the same for me, ** she confirms. ** When I quickened, I knew my daughter's name, and knew that she would be a person, as Timmorn is a person, as I am a person. **

** Yes, ** Seilein says, and her elation is palpable on the link-between-minds. ** I am not afraid. I — **

It is Valeet who interrupts her, and that is a surprise. Valeet is gentle and circumspect; of all of them, she is the one Murrell would think least likely to commit such a breach as interrupting the sharing of one's thoughts, and especially as she does: with an outpouring of grief and anger and terror that is at first wordless and then that becomes words: ** I do not care! I do not want it! ** And then, aloud, a shout: "He is mortal! Your children will be mortal! _I will not bear a child only to die!_ "

Her voice, the first spoken words in all this long debate, echoes around the clearing. The wolves twitch their ears toward it and lift their heads before deciding, apparently, that it is not of interest to them. Valeet gasps on a sob, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth, shaking with more than the cold.

"It is not so bad," Timmorn says, "to be born to die. Every wolf I knew as a child is now dead. I grieved them. But it is this world's way. It is not wrong. It simply _is_."

"For you," Valeet says, her voice low. "But not for me. When I heal you, I can feel it in your blood—age, aging, written in your life's coding—that you will fade, fail, pass away." She shudders. "It is horrible. I cannot bear it within me. I cannot, I cannot."

Timmorn looks at her, fixes her with his eyes that are his mother's eyes and yet that are also wolf eyes, yellow as the greater moon at certain times of autumn. He speaks carefully, as he always does. He speaks seldom and does not send much more often. "This world is not your vessel, going on always in the starlight." He never knew the vessel, but he has heard the stories—seen it in Murrell's mind. "It turns. And like the world, we turn too."

"You do," Valeet says. "You are of this world. But I am not." Her hands drop to her sides, ball into fists. "We were not meant to come here, not like this. And I cannot control Recognition and neither can you. I cannot say if it will happen or if it will not. But I cannot bear the risk. And if I cannot bear the risk, then there is no solution but that I must leave. We cannot Recognize, you and I, if we part and never meet again."

There is a silence, in both voice and mind. Murrell touches her belly, feels with her mind the half-formed thoughts of the daughter there, the child who will be born and will die.

"Valeet," Zartyl says, his voice soft and weary. "You cannot..."

"Not now." Valeet switches back to sending: ** But when the cycle of the year comes around again to warmth, if my mind remains as it is now, then, yes. And I do not think I will change my mind. You cannot know what it is, to touch someone in healing and _feel_ their death waiting for them. **

** I know, ** Aerth sends. Aerth, the other healer, though not as talented as Valeet. ** I know, and yet I can bear it. **

** Then bear it, and I will be glad to not leave my people without a healer, ** Valeet replies. There is a shadow over her mind-voice, deep and somber. ** But I cannot. **

* * *

In the late spring, Murrell gives birth to her daughter, firstborn of Timmorn, whose soul-name is Surlin, though Timmorn calls her 'cub' and 'small one.' He is smitten immediately, a doting father. Some of the elves seem surprised by this, but Murrell is not. She knows enough of wolves to know that they care for their young, and knows enough of Timmorn to have faith in him.

Timmorn does not Recognize that winter, or spring, or summer. But Tinah and Eslin do. Like Murrell, like Seilein, Eslin hears her son's name at conception. There will be another full elf born to the people, and his name will be Voll. There is some relief, at that: the knowledge that it does not take the influence of wolf's blood for Recognition to happen.

In the late summer, when food is plentiful, Valeet and those who agree with her leave the people. It is hard, oh, it is hard; the only partings among the elves have been those unwilling, necessitated by death—or Timmain, with her great sacrifice from which she did not return. But it is not as hard, apparently, for Valeet and the others, as the possibility of bearing or siring a child born to die.

Those who will stay with Timmorn send those who will leave with many supplies. Much of it is dried meat and pelts. Without Timmorn and his pack, they will have a harder time replacing it.

** Harder, but not impossible, ** Eslin sends. (She is going with them. Her son will be the first child born to those who leave, just as Seilein's will be the first born after the split to those who stay.) ** We are not as clumsy or as unskilled as we were in those first days. **

(Murrell can feel Aerth's protest, though he does not voice it. They all loved Timmain, but Murrell sometimes thinks that Aerth loved her most of all. He would not gladly accept the implication, that Timmain's sacrifice and Timmorn's birth was necessary then, but is no longer; that it has somehow run its course. But he has been arguing with those-who-will-leave all the winter and all the spring and all the summer, and yet no minds have been swayed.)

** We will be all right, ** Nekodai sends, as they part. His smile is sad. ** Tell the little one about us, don't let her forget. **

** You are always welcome here again, ** Timmorn sends, when they finally go. (When was it that he became their leader, as Timmain once had been? Murrell can't remember. It seems sometimes that it has been since forever, though that is impossible.) 

** I know, ** Valeet says. ** But I do not think it will happen. **

Murrell does not see them again in her lifetime. She tells Surlin about them, even as Surlin grows to cease using the name Surlin and calls herself Laststar. She tells her other children, too, for she was right in her intuition that she would Recognize Timmorn many times: she tells Rahnee and Clearwater and Essek. But she does not know how much they understand of it, they with their father's golden eyes, their father's love of stories... and their father's disinterest in might-have-been. There were other elves here once, but they are gone; that to them is the beginning and end of it, and they listen raptly and then put it out of their minds. There are other things to think about: the warmth of summer, the brilliance of winter ice, the blood-surge of the hunt, the satisfaction of meat in the belly, the pleasures of joining, the smell of leaves in autumn and flowers in spring. All are part of the world, a perfect wholeness of experience; stories of other elves are just a piece of that, no more and no less.

Murrell cannot put it aside so easily. But there are days, watching her children as they grow into adults, lean and sun-brown and thick-haired and clever, that she thinks that that is precisely why her children are the ones who will flourish.

* * *

**Leavetaking**

They do not leave mortality behind them when they leave, of course. Valeet never would have expected that. After all: so many died in that first bloody conflict when they landed. And more died after, despite the immortality of their blood, despite all the effort Aerth and Valeet could put into saving them. And now that they have splintered off, have left the tribe of Timmain's son and gone their own way—still, still, they die.

There are so _many_ ways to die on this planet. Violence, of course. Accident. Valeet has power enough to close even a vicious wound, but only if she can come to them soon enough. If they are injured far away, it may be that it is too late for her to save them. She has closed wounds only to feel the spirit slip from under her hands, sleep away and fly away to—where?

North. To the vessel. She thinks, sometimes, that if she could go there, if she could return there, she could rejoin spirit to body. They were never meant to die, they were _never meant to die_ , and if only she could find the spirit again and join it to the body before there is time for decay to set in—

But the vessel is many weeks' ride north, now, in a place less plentiful for food, and guarded by humans.

And there are other ways to die, too. Sickness. Hunger. Thirst. Cold. Heat. Poison, accidental and deliberate, and venom, which is like but is not the same. Ways that they had nearly forgotten, just as they had nearly forgotten Recognition and pregnancy and childbearing. (They never forgot sex, but indulged it for intimacy and pleasure, not for the continuation of the species.) But as their deaths slowed, so did their births.

It is not true, as some of them think, that they had lost reproduction entirely—they chose flesh, and with flesh there is risk, however small. Even before the fall robbed most of them of their powers, even back when all of them could heal and shape flesh as they willed, even then, Valeet was one of the strongest of their healers—and most likely that is why she still retains that power, albeit in this lessened form. And as a healer, she knows that they still Recognized and bore children in their immortality. But rarely. A child in a thousand years, perhaps. Not—

Eslin bears her son Voll in the first year. Nekodai Recognizes the placid Avek—silent since the fall of the vessel—and their son is called Yurek, which means 'sleeper in stone,' though they know not why, for their fierce child seems seldom to sleep. Eslin Recognizes again, this time the fierce Daseen, and their child they call Reeahn, a name that means the 'brightness of flight.' Like Daseen, who retains some of the old ability to glide weightless upon air, Reeahn can float from birth.

Voll begins to float by his fifth birthday, as if unwilling to permit anyone to outdo him. And indeed, among the children he is a natural leader—but then, so is Yurek.

And so though they die, and they do die, for all that Valeet had held hope in her heart that by leaving the mortal half-wolf behind they would leave mortality behind—though they die, the people swell. Fewer die than are born.

Valeet herself does not Recognize right away. She feels in her bones that perhaps she could force Recognition, or at least conception, to come to her. But she doesn't force it. _Forcing things_ is what led Timmain—though she was the greatest of them—to her error. Timmain sought to change not herself and not the world but the fate of all the people that came from the vessel, all the _elves:_ to make them mortal, to make them part of this planet with its turnings.

It is not wrong, to turn. It is right for those of this planet. But it is not right for Valeet's people. They have made a choice. They have eschewed the inevitability of death. They seek, instead, _forever_.

When Valeet Recognizes, and quickens, she feels the name of her daughter, just as Valloa (she will not call her by that new name, that wolf-growl name, _Murrell_ ) felt the name of her daughter. _Surlin_ was Valloa's daughter. It means 'adaptable' in the old soul language.

Valeet's daughter's name means 'true judgment.' _Winnowill._ And Winnowill is a beautiful child, darkness and light, strength and song, and stronger than her mother in magic—nearly as strong, Valeet thinks, as Timmain herself.

They do not need the wolf's blood to prosper, not with young Voll to dance upon the air, not with Yurek to shape the stone, not with young Winnowill who can heal, even as a toddler, as if by instinct.

They will survive, whole and as they were meant to be.

She is content.

* * *

**She-Wolf**

Blood. The wolf inside her knows many scents, but it is that one that it pays attention to the most; it is as brilliant in her mind's eye as a single crimson flower in a field of green. Blood; not the hunger-making scent of animal blood to make her mouth water, but elf blood. Fullblooded elf blood, not one of her many siblings or half-siblings or nieces or nephews.

She stops, so abruptly that Zarhan, following close behind, nearly collides with her. "Who bleeds?" she asks.

There is no surprise in the eyes of the others of Timmorn's blood. They smelled it too, she knows. She knows, too, that they left it to her to choose to say something or not: she is their chief. She still is not sure _why_ she is their chief, when others of Timmorn's children are stronger than her, braver, truer either to their elf-self or their wolf-self. She is uneasy in her balance between them. But perhaps, then, that is why.

There is surprise in the eyes of the pure elves, surprise and—something else. Dismay? They revered her father for his wolf traits, Timmorn Yellow-Eyes, Timmain's son, a perfect balance between the elf and the wolf. Unique, Timmorn was, and is. And perhaps that is why they could accept him, where they look at her now with suspicion at her nose's keenness, at her knowledge of blood.

They wanted a hero, she thinks. What they have is a lineage. A lineage she can tell by scent just as she can find blood by scent, smelling elf-and-wolf or simply elf.

"It's me." Kaslen, firstcomer, treeshaper, mother of Rahnee's half-siblings: Brightbranch, who walks alongside her mother; Highwind, the tracker, who is many paces ahead, scouting their trail; Leaf, whose soul went back to the Palace and whose body went back to the earth years ago. Kaslen's smile is tight. "I cut my hand. It's nothing." She holds her hand up—it is already wrapped, no doubt by Brightbranch, who though dreamier than Rahnee prefers from her hunters is conscientious about such things as leaving a blood-trail.

Rahnee nods. She turns and moves on.

There is near-silence, for a time: the crunching of snow beneath their feet; the sound of the wolves ahead of them, breaking the trail; the soft sounds of the woods in winter. They should have left earlier in the year. (They should have left years ago, in truth, as soon as it became clear that the cold was coming in and would not leave. But they, _they_ , the firstcomers and their pureblooded children, would not go south. They were still hoping that Timmorn would come back. They were still hoping—)

** They follow you. ** The touch of Zarhan's mind is as fierce as the fire he commands, as familiar as her own skin. ** You doubt yourself when you don't need to. **

** They follow my father. Who they see in me, for some reason. —I am not him. **

** I know. **

** They do not. They call me 'she-wolf' in the hopes that I will be _him_ , but I am not him. Father was all elf, all wolf, all himself. I am not that. ** Rahnee grimaces. ** I don't know what I am. **

Zarhan catches her hands and makes her stand still. Behind them, the tribe stills as well. Rahnee can feel the differences in them: the full-elves relieved at the rest, her siblings and half-siblings impatient at the stop. The difference prickles her.

** You are the beginning of a new people, ** Zarhan sends. ** You are the She-Wolf, not the _only_ like Timmorn, but the—the greatest of many. After you, our people—we will be the wolf people. The wolf kin. **

** And elves, ** Rahnee sends. She looks sideways, at the gathered elves. Her siblings and half-siblings, her nieces and nephews, with hair like pelts and eyes the same calm unblinking gaze she can see from the pack moving amidst the trees. And the true elves, like her mother and her lifemate, bright and distant as stars. 

** And elves, ** Zarhan sends.

Rahnee nods. The tribe moves on, as tribes will.

* * *

**Ascent**

"There." Voll is pointing at a distant mountain, but Winnowill ignores it. She is more interested in watching Voll himself. Voll, young, vibrant, straight-backed. So unlike their firstcomer parents, who still grieve and shiver and suffer, diminishing year by year. So unlike Yurek and Malovi, who is not driven by bright purpose but by restlessnes. So unlike Ekuar and Mekda, whose curiosity has no goal at all, is only unto itself. No. Voll has _purpose_ , and it shines in him like a star, like one of the stars their parents came from. Winnowill watches that, that brightness.

"There," Voll says again, and then glides lightly down from the boulder on which he stood. Several of their generation can float on air (Winnowill not among them—but her power is the rarer, and, she privately thinks, the most powerful) but Voll is the most skilled, although his nephew Kureel is nearly as talented, and young Aroree can float almost from the cradle. "That is where we will go, and make a home—a home for all elves. Safe and beautiful. Like—"

He doesn't say it, nor does he send words, but his mind touches Winnowill's and shares an image. Voll has never seen the palace, nor has Winnowill. But he saw it in his father's mind, just as Winnowill saw it in her mother's, and in the most desperate sendings of the firstcomers when they are injured: a memory and a longing. The perfect home. Peace.

She says, "Safe and beautiful."

"The rock-shapers will make it so. With grand galleries for those of us who can fly. Hallways. Windows. Arches." He is remembering the shared memories of the palace, of its winding corridors, its twining shell of stone. "Something to record our history—to record all history. Beautiful things. A place of peace and power, for us to live in until we can regain our true home."

"Yes," Winnowill says. She is still not looking at the mountain, but at Voll. She takes his hand. "Yes."

* * *

**Rootless**

They dwindle. Hassbet cannot remember how many times the tribe split, and that only since her birth. She was a child when Voll took himself and his followers to the mountain—her mother Kasekenah, a superbly talented rockshaper, among them—but her own father, Enha, stayed outside, preferring the open sky to the safety of the mountain. When their wanderings took them to the shores of the sea, Daneh the Bold decided to stay there, on the shore, and his sister Eleet with him. The others might have stayed, were it not for the way that Eleet changed the shapes of those who elected to remain by the waterside, crafting finned legs and webbed hands and even gills in their throats. "Nearly as bad as Timmain's choice," said Enha, though Hassbet did not know who Timmain was, or what her choice was. Those who did not want to change, moved on.

In the mountain, too much stasis. By the shore, too much change. Somewhere to the north, the terrifying specter of _Timmain's choice_ , whatever that was. There must be a path that will allow them to be safe, to remain _elves_ , neither stultified beyond growth nor changed beyond measure. But as they seek it, they dwindle. Humans kill them. Hunger kills them. Disease kills them. They do not bear children often enough.

If they are to be the last of the true elves—not buried beneath a mountain away from the sky, not changed to have gills and tails, not burdened by Timmain's choice that is so unspeakable that Hassbet does not even know what it was—they must stop dying in as many numbers as they have. Or they will die out.

"We will go to the plains," Yurek says. "And then to the desert. There are few humans there."

They debate. They discuss. As they do, Nekodai passes away, bitten by a viper. As they do, Hassbet Recognizes and bears a daughter.

It is that daughter, _Savah_ , whose name she hears in her dreams, whose name means _light of memory_ , that makes Hassbet decide.

"We will go," she says. _Memory_ will not live only to remember deaths. They will build something more there, out in the desert, under the open sky.

* * *

**Blood of Ten**

She has not gone mad.

She has not gone mad, because the wolf's memory is short. She has not gone mad with ten thousand years of wolf-memories because she does not have ten thousand years of wolf-memories. She has only _memories_ , long as pain, short as winter, clear as the sky.

 _Child_ , she thinks, when the boy touches her. And then: _kin_. And then: _my son's daughter's son's daughter's son's son's daughter's son's son's son._

—and that alone is enough for her to know that she is losing the wolf-shape, because the wolf does not measure kin in that way. The wolf knows pack and not-pack.

She is not wholly a wolf. She is an elf. And because of who she is, what she is, knowing is the same as becoming.

She was a wolf. She is an elf.

It is cold.

The child looks at her with eyes as wide and blue as the sky. His sister's eyes are green as growing things. He is immortal, a child of the stars; she is mortal, a child of this place. They are both her son's descendants, heirs of this world and all its lessons.

Timmain closes her eyes against ten thousand years of memories, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Murno Sickafoose's brilliant poem ["Scars."](http://endicottstudio.typepad.com/poetrylist/scars-by-munro-sickafoose.html)
> 
> I was thinking about the backstory of Elfquest, and it struck me how extremely strange it must have been for the High Ones, to have gone from a position of safe immortality to one of danger and very present mortality. And not least of all in literally mating with an animal to produce mortal offspring! That led me to this fic, exploring how the elves adapted to the concept of danger and mortality in various ways. I hope you enjoyed it, and have a merry Yuletide!


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